The Desmos quarter just ended and this was a huge one for the team of teachers I support.

First, we made substantial upgrades to our entire activity pool. Second, we released ten new activities in the same amount of time it took us to release one activity two years ago. This is all due to major improvements to our technology and our pedagogy.

Technologically, our engineers created a powerful scripting language that hums beneath our activities, enabling us to set up more meaningful interactions between teachers, students, and mathematics.

The result: we cut an activity pool that once comprised 300 pretty good activities down to 127 great ones, and we gave each one of those 127 a serious upgrade, making sure they took advantage of our best technology and pedagogy. Then we added ten more.

I don’t think I’ve learned as much or worked as hard in a three-month span since grad school, and I owe a debt of gratitude to my team – Shelley Carranza, Christopher Danielson, and Michael Fenton – for committing the same energy. Also, it goes without saying that none of our activity ideas would have been possible without support from our engineers and designers.

In future posts, I’ll excerpt those lessons to illustrate our digital pedagogy. For today, I’ll just introduce the activities themselves.

Mr K

Travis

Typo on Circles?
Sample Answer: Each circle includes the red points inside and the blue points outside of the circumference.
Switch ‘red’ and ‘blue’?
Also, it would be cool if you could engineer all 4 of these to appear. It can do two, but not four.
\left(x+\left[-1.25\ ,1.25\right]\right)^2+\left(y+\left[-2.165,2.165\right]\right)^2=\frac{25}{4}

Dan Meyer

Larissa connors

You are my hero! Teaching with Desmos systems of equations activities this week has been ridiculously gratifying, SO many good conversations are happening in my classes and the kids are all engaged! Can’t wait to use these new activities!

Scott Immel

These look awesome! I am continually amazed at how versatile Desmos is. Yesterday, I had 7th graders checking equivalence of expressions using Desmos and then in the evening I used Desmos teaching Calculus at our local Community College to show limits and continuity! I can’t wait to start playing with these activities!

Also, the CAASSP test in California has adopted the Desmos calculator (I’m guessing all Smarter Balanced states?), which is a huge upgrade for our students!

So many thoughts! First and foremost, it is so easy to take for granted all the wonderful resources the Desmos team has created. It’s mind blowing that this is all freely available to teachers and is simultaneously pedagogically sound and technologically engaging.

Regarding the Graphing Stories, will there be (or perhaps is there currently) a way to do this on activity builder such that you can upload a graph, have it overlay the numbers, and have it “play back” the graph in real time like you’ve done?

Dan Meyer

Regarding the Graphing Stories, will there be (or perhaps is there currently) a way to do this on activity builder such that you can upload a graph, have it overlay the numbers, and have it “play back” the graph in real time like you’ve done?

Thanks, Robert.

Does “you” mean a teacher or does “you” mean a student? When you say “upload a graph” do you mean a camera phone picture of a graph on paper? Maybe you can clue me into the kind of lesson you’re imagining.

Dan Meyer

Yeah, that’s cool. I see where you’re going there. There isn’t any way to do what you’re trying to do without access to the admin toolset. But I’m happy to make that happen. If you’re game, head to the calculator and create the answer graph. Send that to me and I’ll assemble the other screens.

Dan Meyer

Here’s my beef. I love all these activities and the interaction that the secret Desmos code adds to their functionality but for someone who doesn’t follow any of the Desmos worker bees on Twitter or this or the Desmos blog, they would be unknown to exist. Even if they went to the Teacher.Desmos.com site they basically either have to already know they exist or they are outta luck. Sure you can search by topic but there has to be some better way to visually put all these great activities in the spotlight without having to sift blog posts and Twitter. And yes, I do know how to keep track of my own book marks but I’m talking about someone new to the whole Desmos vibe.

These are awesome! I love the streamlining of the activities. I just did Picture Perfect. It feels like Central Park, but I think more accessible. With all the work my students have done with y=mx+b I think this will deepen their understanding of the growth of patterns. It also really stretches thinking of using the slope formula to calculate the coefficient of n, your hook or figure number.

I also liked land the plane a lot. With an upcoming unit on slope, I’m definitely going to include both of these. Thanks. Looking forward to digging into the others.

Happened to use teacher pacing for the 1st time too with Stadel’s Inequalities activity today. The discussion was fueled by the histogram after submitting a slide with a yes or no question followed with reasoning. After clicking on to the next slide, the sound of quiet concentration was an awesome feeling to see my 6th grade math support students exhibiting.

Dan Meyer

The more I use the conversation tools, the easier they become and the better I get at planning activities to take advantage of them. I build activities that have more pause-worthy moments, moments where students unloads lots of early thinking which I can help them formalize in a conversation.

Melissa Lechleiter

This is great. I was just on Desmos looking for a graphing polynomials for my students to get some more practice and have a little fun. They love when we have Desmos activities. They like the marble drop activates, I use it in all my classes Algebra 1 to PreCal, the more advance student “cheat” use non linear functions and non quadratic to get the stars. I can’t wait for them to see the new activities. Thank you to you and your team for working so hard to help us become better teachers.